11 June 2007

A Word About Lee Harvey Oswald

Editor’s Note: November is indelibly associated with the assassination of President Kennedy, and the fall is normally the period when major new books and articles are timed to appear. Because May marked what would have been John F. Kennedy’s 90th birthday, however, several notable new books appeared last month, including Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, David Talbot’s Brothers,Burton Hersh’s Bobby and J. Edgar, and James Piereson’s Camelot and the Cultural Revolution.(Reclaiming History has already been reviewed for The Wall Street Journal and this website, and Brothers will be reviewed here in July.

Despite the unanticipated burst of attention, one aspect of November 22nd remains glossed over: the motivation that drove Lee Harvey Oswald to commit political murder. Washington Decoded is pleased to publish a new essay by the journalist and author who knew Oswald best, and wrote one of the lamentably few reliable books about the assassin of President Kennedy.

After decades of speculation about a grassy knoll, the Zapruder film, and an acoustical tape, the man behind it
all is too often overlooked. Lee Oswald was not a cardboard figure but a human being, and although he had
barely turned twenty-four at the time he killed President Kennedy, he had a
motive.

Oswald was a believing Marxist, and his motive was to strike the
deadliest blow he could imagine at capitalism in the United States.
Oswald had been headed that way most of his sentient life. He had, by his
account, become seriously interested in politics at fifteen or sixteen, when
someone on a street corner in the Bronx handed him a leaflet about Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed two years earlier as spies for
the Soviet Union. At eighteen, huddled in his Marine Corps barracks in
Japan, he studied Russian from a Berlitz phrase book. And at nineteen, he
wangled a hardship discharge from the Marines and made the arduous journey
by steamship and train to the USSR.

Arriving there as a tourist, he immediately proclaimed ­ to Russian
authorities and officials of the U.S. embassy in Moscow ­ that he intended
to relinquish his U.S. citizenship and become a citizen of the USSR. It was
at that moment in his life, November, 1959, that I happened to meet and talk
with him.

I was a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance in
search of a human interest story and he had just marked his twentieth
birthday.
I had no way of knowing that this boy ­ dressed in a dark gray suit,
white
shirt, and dark red tie—he looked like an American college
student—had, two weeks earlier, slashed his wrists in his hotel
bathtub in a gesture of
desperation after being informed by Soviet officials that he could not
remain in the Soviet Union. Throughout our conversation, which took
place
over several hours in my room at the Metropole Hotel, I asked Oswald why
he
was defecting to the USSR, while he tried to engage me in a discussion
of
Marxist economics.

When I asked what would become of him if he returned to
the United States, he replied that his lot would be that of “workers
everywhere.” He would be ground down by capitalism as his mother, a
practical nurse, had been. He spoke bitterly of racial discrimination in the
United States, but did not disclose that as a schoolboy he had taken action against
it by riding in the black section of the segregated buses of New Orleans.

While I realized that Oswald was angry at the country he was hoping to leave
behind, I also sensed that his desire to live in the Soviet Union had
something theoretical about it. He had traveled thousands of miles to get
there, but had ventured no more than two blocks on his own and preferred to sit by himself in his hotel room rather than go sight-seeing in Moscow. So
far as I could see, his enthusiasm for the Soviet Union was based on neither
knowledge of, or curiosity about, everyday life there.

The Russians refused Oswald’s plea for citizenship but allowed him to remain
in their country. He, whether from anger at the way he claimed to have
been treated by U.S. consul Richard E. Snyder, or from desire to leave himself an
“out,” refused to return to the American embassy to reclaim the passport he
had left behind.

In early 1960, a couple of months after I met him, Oswald was sent to the
provincial city of Minsk and given a job at the Minsk Radio Plant. There he
distinguished himself as a below-average worker, but embarked on an
eight-month romance with a woman named Ella German of which he seemed to be
proud. But Ella jilted him, and Oswald, to spite her, married nineteen-year-old pharmacist Marina Prusakova. Her friends and his co-workers quickly
taught him the daily realities of Soviet life.

His disenchantment with
the poverty, lack of amusement, and ubiquitous spying can be found in what
he called his “Historic Diary” and in “The Collective,” an essay he started
to write in the USSR.
After less than two years in Minsk, Oswald opened a correspondence with the
once-hated U.S. consul, Richard E. Snyder, in Moscow, seeking to return to the
United States. Snyder’s superiors in Washington determined that, having left
his passport at the embassy that angry autumn of 1959, Oswald had retained
his citizenship.

In June, 1962, he was allowed to return to America, bringing Marina and their three month-old daughter, June.
That summer and fall, and throughout the following winter, he held a series of
menial, disheartening jobs, first repairing houses in Fort Worth, then as
apprentice at a printing plant in Dallas. Oswald’s criticisms of the society
around him returned with a vengeance, and his reading of two left-wing
publications, The Worker, mouthpiece of the U.S. Communist Party, and The
Militant, newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, helped focus his
discontent. Oswald said of The Militant that “you can see what they want you
to do by reading between the lines.”

That winter the two newspapers were filled with diatribes against the
far-right John Birch Society and a like-minded figure, Major General Edwin A. Walker (Resigned, U.S. Army),
who happened to live in Dallas. Although Oswald was barely able to feed his
family, he nonetheless ordered two guns by mail, a revolver and a $19.95
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a scope. On a Sunday afternoon in late March, 1963, he had
Marina photograph him in their Dallas backyard holding both guns and copies
of The Militant and The Worker. Ten days later, on April 10, 1963, Oswald
fired a shot at General Walker that missed Walker’s head by only an inch or
two. And a few days after that, Oswald, his pistol strapped at his waist,
told Marina that he was going to “have a look” at former Vice-President
Richard Nixon, who he said was in Dallas that day. Marina managed to keep
him at home, and when Oswald subsequently announced that he meant to leave
Dallas and seek a job in New Orleans, she was relieved, thinking that he
might get over his obsession with politics there.

She was wrong. Within
days of his arrival in New Orleans, Oswald was standing on the docks, handing
out “Fair Play for Cuba” leaflets.
New Orleans, despite what Marina hoped would be the restraining influence of
his cousins and aunt, proved to be no more salutary than Dallas. Oswald read
books about Mao Tse-tung, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro that he found in
the public library, and spent the long summer evenings sighting his rifle on the
porch, and working the bolt action. He explained to Marina that he wanted to go to Cuba to teach Fidel’s
army how to repel an American invasion. And he sketched out his newest scheme. He
would hijack an airplane headed to Florida and redirect it to Cuba. While he
was in the cockpit, she was to stand at the rear, holding June with one hand
and pointing Lee’s pistol at the passengers with the other, and together
they would join Fidel.

Marina was alarmed by this latest “crazy”
scheme, but succeeded in laughing
Lee out of it. Go to Cuba if you must, she said, but do it a legal
way. And
so, in late September, 1963, he boarded a bus to Mexico City, where he
attempted to secure entry visas for Cuba and the USSR. After failing on
both
counts he returned, crestfallen, to Dallas, where Marina ­was
expecting their second child, having been taken in by a generous
couple, Ruth and Michael Paine.

Oswald’s intentions
were now a jumble: that fall he wrote to the Soviet embassy in Washington,
requesting visas for Marina and June to enter the USSR. As Marina was to
analyze it later, he meant to stash his family in Russia and then travel by
himself to China, to see whether Communism there was less bureaucratic and
closer to the ideal than the Cuban or Soviet varieties. But things worked out differently.

Oswald found a job at the Texas School Book
Depository and lived by himself in Dallas while Marina and the children
­ (their second daughter, Rachel, was born in October) lived with the
Paines in the nearby suburb of Irving. On weekends Oswald
would come to visit.

A new political vista opened for Oswald on Tuesday, November 19. That day he spotted a
story in either the Dallas Morning News or Times Herald that described the parade route of President Kennedy’s
upcoming visit to Dallas. The presidential motorcade would be passing
directly by the windows of the Texas School Book Depository. The
precise moment when Oswald made up his mind is not known, and never
will be, but the first external manifestation of what he was thinking
occurred on Thursday morning, when he asked a co-worker, Buell Wesley
Frazier, for a ride home after work. Frazier was accustomed to giving
Oswald a ride to Irving on Fridays, but thought nothing of this change
in plans.

On departing for work Friday morning, Oswald left behind his
wedding ring and nearly all the money he had. He brought to work the
rifle he had originally purchased for the purpose of killing General
Walker, but unlike the previous April, this time he did not miss his
intended target. At almost exactly 12:30 CST, he fired three shots and assassinated the embodiment of the American polity he despised.

Everything in Oswald’s life proclaims that this was a man prepared
to take dangerous and dramatic action for the sake of his political beliefs.
Joining with others in street demonstrations or precinct work were not for
him. He wanted no part of the “system.” To the contrary, he wanted to bring
it down. He considered himself a “Marxist” or a “Socialist.” He was
attracted to socialism in Cuba and the USSR, but repelled by the
bureaucratic reality. And despite his disappointments with both, by the
autumn of 1963 he was still hoping to find the Socialist paradise in China.

The possibility that Oswald’s political convictions may have played a
decisive part in his shooting John Kennedy was downplayed in the early
sixties because President Johnson and other officials did not want the
assassination to become a casus belli with the Soviet Union. And to the
public, this explanation, at a moment when capitalism was riding high,
appeared ludicrous. Besides, for a Marxist, killing this president appeared
wildly inconsistent. Kennedy was a liberal. Shooting at him, unlike
the attempt on General Walker, appeared to conflict with Oswald’s
beliefs about racial discrimination and better relations with the USSR.

But
to Oswald the believing Marxist, it did not matter much whether the
president was liberal or conservative. What mattered was that he was leader
of the greatest capitalist nation on earth. Oswald wanted to decapitate
capitalism as he, almost literally, decapitated the president of the United
States.
Seen in this light, an observation by Marina, the person closest to him at
this period of his life, makes perfect sense. Had her husband survived to be
tried for the president’s murder, Marina believed, not only would he have confessed—he would have boasted about what he had done and proclaimed
that it was all for the Socialist cause.

Oswald did not succeed, of course, in bringing down American
capitalism, any more than Timothy McVeigh succeeded in sparking a
national uprising when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma
City. But Oswald’s act of violence indisputably ushered in an
era of unease and suspicion in American life that was not there prior to the Kennedy assassination.

Oswald was not responsible for all of the damage that has befallen American society since 1963, much as he would have wished to be. Some of that damage is the result of events related only tangentially to the assassination of President Kennedy. But some of the injury can, with justice, be attributed to conspiracy theorists who have gone to superhuman lengths to avoid facing the truth.

They have constructed wildly-implausible scenarios, far-out, fictitious “conspirators,” and have scandalously maligned the motives of Kennedy’s successor, rather than take a hard look at the man who actually did it. They have, ironically, done more to poison American political life than Lee Oswald—with the most terrible of intentions—was able to do.

Priscilla J. McMillan is the author of Marina and Lee (Harper & Row, 1977), and more recently, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race (Viking, 2005).

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Comments

Ms McMillan's portrayal of Oswald is right on. I've spent more than 30 years researching and talking with those that knew him best. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theorists have derided Oswald and his abilities through sheer ignorance of who he was. My personal belief is the genesis of the assassination occurred on September 7th, 1963 when AP Reporter Daniel Harker interviewed Fidel Castro at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana. Castro went on record that date with "if the American Government continues it's attempts to eliminate Cuban Officials, they in turn will not be safe". This AP story first appeared on September 9th in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Oswald, a voracious reader was living in New Orleans at the time. Just two weeks later he was on his way to Mexico City. This case is not that complicated.

I would encourage anyone who reads PJM's article to also read my three-part series entitled "Priscilla and Lee: Before and After the Assassination" at Clint Bradford's website: http://www.jfk-info.com/pjm-tit.htm

Has it ever occurred to Mrs. McMillan that Oswald knew full well that killing JFK would mean that Lyndon Johnson, a Texas wheeler-dealer, who was closely associated with John Connally as well as Fred Korth (Connally's replacement as Secretary of the Navy), would now be President? In fact, it was suggested on Nov. 23, 1963 that Connally might actually have been Oswald's target. In Sept. 1964, during her fourth and last W.C. interview, Marina Oswald suggested that possiblity too.
Oswald had expressed his anger towards Connally in a letter sent from Russia in regard to the reduction of his honorable discharge to less-than-honorable, as a result of his defection. By then, however, Connally had resigned to run for governor of Texas. But Oswald's hostility might also have been related to the fact that Connally suggested to JFK that Fred Korth, a Ft. Worth lawyer and banker, replace him in Washington. Ironically, and possibly significantly, Korth had represented Edward Ekdahl, Oswald's stepfather, in divorce proceedings vs. Marguerite Oswald, in 1948, when Oswald was a young boy (and who had become attached to his new father).
- Peter R. Whitmey
Abbotsford, BC

If, as Ms. Johnson believes, the supposed "lone nut" Oswald assassinated President Kennedy for a political reason, Oswald, most surely, would have proclaimed it publicly some time(s) to his Communist comrades and the world during his last 45 hours to punctuate his adult life politics.

Oswald never proclaimed that to his comrades . . . never even came close to proclaiming that.

Any student of the history of the Sixties should acknowledge that the CIA was vastly out of control. As a result of the assassination and the resulting inquiry by the conspiracy theorists, the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee exposed to the public the operational excesses of the CIA. It should be conceded, therefore, that Oswald was in some way responsible for the exposure of the CIA's misdeeds of the Fifties and the Sixties (with or without the approval and/or knowledge of the Kennedys). I would agree that there are many "wildly-implausible scenarios, far-out, fictitious conspiracies", but if not for Oswald and the conspiracy theorists, there may have been no exposure.

One thing I have noticed after many years of studying Priscilla Johnson McMillan as well as having seen numerous interviews with her, including the recent Robert Stone documentary shown in PBS in January 2008, is the fact she gives the impression that she really knew Lee Harvey Oswald. Granted, she was given exclusive access to his wife (showing how strong her Washington connections were), but her only direct contact with Lee was for several hours in the fall of 1959. Even though she gave her readers the impression that there might be further interviews with the US Marine, that wasn't to be. Even after Oswald returned to the US in June, 1962, which was publicized in a Washington, DC newspaper (as well as in the Ft. Worth paper), Miss Johnson seemed disinterested in making contact with Oswald and his Russian wife and child. She didn't even bother to keep a copy of her 1959 NANA article, or at least couldn't find it when she learned that Oswald had been arrested in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And yet she has spent the last 45 years trying to convince everyone that she really knew Lee Harvey Oswald, almost like a son, and could, in fact, apparently read his mind. But how is that possible from one five-hour interview? I would be interested in a response to this question from Mrs. McMillan.

This site makes my head want to explode. It is called Washington Decoded which makes me think that it contains some sort secret illuminating insight. And it has an Orwell quote at the top, that when marshaled in service of anti-anti-secrecy is so Orwellian it's like a picture of a shirtless George Orwell who on his chest has a tattoo of the likeness of George Orwell, and that tatooed likeness of George Orwell has, on his bicep, a George Orwell head tattoo.

It's like that ABC special "JFK-Beyond Conspiracy" that takes the viewer on a mind-bending journey through the labyrinth of lies and the mazes of mirrors and then reveals the shocking truth of it all: It was Oswald!

Somebody needs to tell those U.N. tin-foil hatters that the evidence clearly points an unknown Lone Nut, Bhutto assassin. The fingerprints of lone-nuttery are all over that case.

Ms. McMillan claims to be a mind reader. But she needs to read more about Lee Harvey Oswald, and use some common sense. Lee was obviously a patriotic American who joined the US Marines as soon as he could on his 17th birthday. He had Top Secret clearance, which means his background and psychology were thoroughly tested. He wanted to serve his country, and be a spy like James Bond--like many men at the time. Lee went on a mission to infiltrate the Russian KGB as a "dangle"--the CIA term for someone who pretends to be a defector, but would actually be a double agent for the USA. The KGB was not fooled by his pro-Castro activities, and did not bite. A retired officer said on James Earl Jones's JFK special that "he was too obvious." Lee's mission failed, so he came back "From Russia With Love" even though he had defected. Plus he was allowed to bring a wife, and child--even though he had not lined up a job. If you know beans about immigration (or common sense), you know this is impossible, without some help from the US State Department. Lee never said anything bad about JFK, even to his wife. Lee was a spy for the USA. Lee's mission to Russia failed. He was a convenient and expendable patsy, who was silenced before he could talk.